Thursday, April 17, 2014

The CRTC and Porn, or How Many Double Entendres Can Fit in One Post

It’s old news by internet standards,
but recently the CRTC was in the headlines for issuing notice against a few
adult video cable channels. The problem? Among other things, not enough Canadian Content. So the CRTC is telling those channels they
need to include more Canadian porn in their programming or risk losing their license.

Naturally, this elicited howls of laughter,
and more beaver jokes than I care to recall.
But there is a serious issue with this, so let’s not beat around the
bush.

The
CRTC is DEMANDING the increased sexual exploitation of Canadian women and
men.

I’m going to focus on women here, as porn
is often discussed in and around the issue of women’s rights. The debates typically end up running in
circles. One side argues porn is an
exploitation of women by the oppressive male patriarchy. The other says porn is just another way women can
freely exercise their sexual liberty.
The two camps beat each senseless other until someone sane locks things
down or Goodwin’s Law finally gets invoked.

So is porn freedom or oppression? Liberty, or exploitation? Simply (well, maybe not simply, but), it’s
both. No matter how freely you choose to
enter pornography, doing so means your body and sex are being exploited to make
someone money. In short, you are being
pimped.

Curiously this is happening just after the
Supreme Court struck down some of the laws surrounding prostitution,
forcing a major rethink on how we approach it. So we have the situation where the government
is asking how do we protect women and reduce prostitution while at the same
time a bureaucracy is demanding more women be paid not only to have sex, but to
have it recorded and broadcast around the country. On top of that, this same bureaucracy is
responsible for ensuring other TV broadcasters do not show sexually explicit or
exploitative material. And this of course is all on top of the
general concerns about how women are portrayed in media in general, and how
that influences our society. In short,

THIS IS INSANE.

The government’s role is to protect people
from exploitation, not force people into it.
I understand the reasoning for Canadian Content rules and how they are meant to help develop and
promote Canadian cultural content. These
rules should be removed for porn channels.
Pornography and sexual exploitation are not a part of Canadian culture
we should be developing.